Stupid mistakes.

I arrived once again in the Abregado system, beneath the majestic red giant, and entered the ship in stealth mode.

Thankfully, the Malevolence was still there, hunter crews scouring the debris field for Skywalker's ship.

And I found it without delay, floating away in the shadow of the Malevolence, right next to ... the emergency dock.

Either Skywalker has insane luck or the droids are extremely stupid, likely both, but somehow, Skywalker had not only avoided detection, but also slipped past the guards to the emergency dock, infiltrating the Malevolence itself, before shutting down his ship and pushing it away to avoid further trouble.

Chosen ones really are a cut above the rest huh?

I'll have to create a weapon especial to deal with their kind later.

But, Skywalker's actions had given me a deadline, again.

Bringing my ship to hide behind one of it's engines, I tucked it into the gaps between the thrusters, before exiting it.

Calculating the distance between me and the docking port below, I began to determine the coordinates to teleport to.

Opening a portal to the ship's docking bay, I donned by power armor and stepped in, only to find myself in space, a quarter mile away from the docking bay.

In the time I had taken to calculate the distance and put in the power armor the ship had moved away, albeit at a floating pace.

Still, all was not lost. Next time, I'll take the ship's movement into account.

I activated the jet thrusters on my back and grabbed onto the docking bay, cutting a hole open in it with my wrist mounted laser.

As the vacuum sucked out the air in the chamber, I thrust inwards, and with one last push entered the Malevolence proper, right before the emergency safeties activated, and locked the access way behind me, slammed shut.

The first thing I did once I confirmed thay there were no droids around was to find a control panel.

Hot wiring the nearest one, I connected it to the system mainframe of the Malevolence, and jammed my hand in, channeling my power throughout the ship, taking control, though I had yet to show it.

Images flooded my mind from the camera feed, and I spotted the little orphan Annie and his padawan, sneaking past a garrison of droids in the charging center.

There we go. Found them already. Three miles away from me.

I ran a hand across my face at the thought of walking that far.

I was never one for much physical exercise but seeing the absurd sizes people build their ships to, I began to reconsider.

No wonder the jedi were so fit. If I had to walk and commute miles upon miles everyday just to give like two commands to some random technician, I would become the next Michael Phelps too.

Or not. When I rebuild the Malevolence, I'm putting a vacuum shuttle all the way across the damn ship. No way I'm walking that far everyday. Or taking their internal rail system for that matter like a fucking pleb.

I switched to the rail system, and shut it down, stopping all major troop movement throughout the ship.

That should take their attention away from my actions, while they try to get it back up and running.

Next I shut off the surveillance in one of the charging centers devoid of droids for the moment and closed all doors around it, making it safe for me to teleport to.

Portaling in, I opened the door, and walked out, looking around for the two idiots.

The corridor was empty. So they had probably moved on.

I walked to another panel nearby, and connected to it, when suddenly I heard the clanking of metal against metal, rhythmically moving closer.

Disconnecting from the system, I stepped back, and came face to face with a droid garrison, who had now come to recharge their batteries.

Well shit!

"Hey! Intruder!" A droid alerted, raising it's blaster at me.

"Nononono!" I exclaimed, "I am not an intruder. I came here to meet Lord Dooku! He won't like it if you kill me!"

"Hold up!" The droid at the lead ordered stopping the garrison from wasting my suit's battery on forcefields, with a customary chorus of 'roger rogers'.

"I am actually lost here. Could one of you help take me to him?" I added, as the droids looked at each other.

Truly, they are programmed to be stupid!

I crept closer, trying to get my hands on one to take them over, when they turned their attention back to me freezing me in my tracks.

"I will take you." The lead droid replied, two more following him out of formation, surrounding me, while the others moved on into the charging room.

"Follow me."

I nodded, and walked with them in a triangular formation, until I saw the rest of the garrison had begun charging.

With my back secure, I swept my hands at the droids flanking me and took them over, before doing the same to the one ahead of me.

Alright. Three down, three thousand to go.

"Stay here. Stop anyone else from passing by." I ordered, and turned around walking back into the charging room, and turning the rest of the droids to my side.

Then, having secured the corridor, I reached into system again, and scoured the area for Skywalker.

Now, I found him further away, moving towards the general docks, or so I figured. He could also be going to the fifth auxiliary droid storage, but somehow I doubt that.

"Alright, three of you, follow me." I said, "the rest of you, back into the charging station."

With a legitimate escort, I now made quick headway through the labyrinthine ship superstructure, occasionally checking up on Skywalker.

At one point he had run into heavy droid troops and had had to retreat, changing directions again.

Following his footsteps, I kept taking over more and more droids, heavy infantry and shield droids too until I had amassed a large enough force to corner him.

Finally, after a good half of an hour, I finally found him, cornered in a dead end, defending against one of my heavy droid companies.

Alright. Now to play the hero.

I sent the rest of the droids away and told them to return to their regular programming till further commands are issued.

Then, I slunk past the surveillance, shutting it off on the path I was planning on taking.

Now ready, I took a deep breath, and jumped in.

Rushing down the dead end, I strafed the corridor with my laser, slicing the company of droids by nearly half, while Anakin, pushed the other half, who were now turning to face me, off balance, before Ahsoka pierced them with her lightsaber.

"Thanks for that, uh..." Ahsoka said, standing back up.

"Walker. Jay Walker. Admiral Yualren sent me to save your sorry butts. Come. This way. I have a ship ready outside."

R2D2 beeped something just then and Anakin nodded.

"Right? How do we know you aren't going to lead us straight to Count Dooku?"

"You don't? But you guys have lightsabers and the force, while I have a laser cutter with an almost dead battery. I don't think I'm going to be any threat to you, if you decide to just kill me if I betray you. So it really wouldn't make sense for me to lead you into a tarp would it? Besides, Count Dooku will just kill me alongside you on sight if he found us, so as to keep his new weapon and it's capabilities a secret. Any way you look at it, it's my loss. But...if you still think this is a trap....I could always just keave you to your own devices." I shrugged.

"No. You make a good point. Sorry about earlier. We should be thanking you for your help." Anakin replied, calming down now.

"Yes, yes. Thank me later. Right now, we need to get out of here before they find us. I have incapacitated the droids in this area so for the time being, they won't be a problem. Follow me." I said

"And how exactly did you know to do that?" Ahsoka asked, curious.

"Well, I am a researcher, if you didn't know. And until recently, I was doing my research in one the lost world that fall in the Separatist territories. Droids were ....a regular nuisance, let's just say. So I came up with a way to deal with them. A pulse jammer. Knocks the clankers out cold for about an hour or so. Enough time for me to get away." I expalined, as we returned to the charging stations.

"Now the rear battle stations should be....that way?" I acted, guessing the way.

"Why are going to the rear battle stations?" Anakin asked.

"Because they have a separate maintanence airlock near the engines, where I hid my ship. I hear jedi can last a bit in space, correct?"

"Yes. Why?"

"Because droid engineers don't need to breathe. Hence the distinct lack of space suits. We'll have to get to the ship through space. I'll pull you guys along, one by one, but you'll need to hold your breath." I answered.

"That's...workable." Anakin replied, looking at R2D2.

"And R2 has his own thrusters so one of us can use him."

"That's great." I said, turning the corner to a bridge through the middle of the ship, when a muffled mechanical voice rang out in the hollow dome.

"I thought you would come by here, Skywalker."

We looked up to see a hulking robot with four arms, looming over us, from the crossway above.

General Grievous!

How did he even find us?!

I thought I shut off all surveillance in our path.

"How?" Ahsoka asked, perplexed.

"The surveillance on this route was oddly... disturbed. Something the likes of you would come up with. Form there, it wasn't hard to follow your puny little footsteps." He mocked.

Oh boy!

I really slammed my leg on the axe on this one huh?

Of course he would get suspicious if there was only one series of blackouts in the ship.

Dangit!

Stupid! Stupid me!

Such a stupid mistake!

Should've make decoys when I had the chance.

"Now prepare to die!"